Bigots: Rhode Island AG Peter Neronha
and Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory

It took over seven years, but he finally got the press conference he always craved.

Back in 2019 (!), we reported how Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha was among several AGs across the country seeking to replicate the public relations triumph that Pennsylvania's AG Josh Shapiro garnered in 2018 with his blockbuster "grand jury report" that gained international attention.

Well, Neronha's day in the sun finally came to pass last week when he released a 284-page tome (pdf) claiming to chronicle abuse by priests in his state in the Diocese of Providence. But to say that Neronha's report was underwhelming would be an overstatement.

Nothing new in the report

Even by Neronha's own admission, his office scoured records dating back "three-quarters of a century" to 1950, when Harry S. Truman was President and Bing Crosby still ruled the charts. In other words, this was a history report by any standard.

Neronha surprisingly admits that "clergy sexual abuse in Rhode Island appears to have peaked in the 1960s and 1970s and to have declined since" and that "no credibly accused abuser priest is currently serving in active ministry in the Diocese of Providence." And nearly 97% of alleged abuse occurred between 1950 to 1997, and 42% before 1972.

But most notably, he admits that of the 75 accused priests listed in the report, 64, or 85%, were deceased and thus no longer around to defend themselves. And if that important tidbit were not enough, Neronha then had the gall to fault the Diocese of Providence for both not investigating claims against long-dead priests but also for "destroying confidential files following priests' deaths unless there was pending litigation involving the priests."

Imagine that. The diocese did not investigate cases in which the principle actor is already dead, and then it destroyed personnel records of dead employees just like very other institution on the planet, which it is allowed to do under the law. Powerful stuff, Pete.

But here comes the Boston Globe

But leave it to the nation's premier anti-Catholic newspaper, The Boston Globe, to treat Neronha's report as if it were on par with the Apollo Moon landing.

The Globe naturally published no less than six items about Neronha's report over a period of just a few days, and that does not include the paper's glowing profile of Neronha just days after the report.

The Globe, in particular, trumpeted Neronha's claims about "credible allegations" against a priest named Rev. Francis Santilli. But what neither Neronha nor the Globe told the public was that the diocese thoroughly investigated the claims against Santilli years ago and found them not credible, even by the diocese's very lenient standards.

Pushing back

While this is just a same-old, tired attack on the Catholic Church, we want to give kudos to Bishop Bruce Lewandowski of the Diocese of Providence for responding to AG Neronha's bogus report.

Lewandowski reminded the public that the diocese voluntarily agreed to give Neronha all of its personnel files in the name of transparency, and "any view that there is an on-going crisis within this diocese which requires urgent intervention is debunked by the fact that the Report took nearly seven years to be publicly released." Boom.

Lewandowski also noted, "The Report itself reveals no evidence of recent child sexual abuse by clergy, no credible accusations against those in ministry today, and no instances of the diocese's failure to meet its legal reporting obligations." And the diocese added, "the Report itself states that it 'did not produce evidence of any recent child sexual abuse by clergy'." Checkmate.

Maybe the next time some publicity-hungry attorney general goes knocking on the door of a chancery to see a diocese's personnel files, the bishop should tell the guy to take a hike.

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Recommended reading:
- 'Diocese of Providence Response to the Attorney General Report' by Bishop Bruce Lewandowski
- 'Two wrongs don't make a right: Denying due process to accused clergy is not how to mend mistakes' (23 Feb 2026) by Fr. Thomas Kocik (Substack)
- 'Where the Dallas Charter Went Wrong' (23 Feb 2026) by Michael J. Mazza (First Things)

Captain Ahab: Robert Herguth of the Chicago Sun-Times

It's a simple fact we have stated numerous times before, but it bears repeating: The Catholic Church is the only institution on the planet where if you are an employee merely accused of some wrongdoing from decades ago, your name may end up on a public web site somewhere for the entire world to see forever as if you were an adjudicated child molester.

Think about that.

Now, thankfully, the Church is finally starting to awaken to the unfairness of this obviously unjust practice. In a letter (pdf) last September – which we also reported about earlier this year here – the Vatican determined that the publication of the names of priests merely accused of misconduct contradicts Canon Law and is unjust. The letter stated:

"[H]aving as an indispensable legal basis the statement of the Supreme Pontiff Francis according to which 'it is necessary to avoid the publication of the lists of the accused, even by the Dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and the definitive conviction,' the answer can only be negative with respect to the disclosure of hidden information concerning anyone, even more so when it concerns deceased persons."

But this seemingly common-sense decision by the Vatican did not sit well with Chicago Sun-Times investigative reporter Robert Herguth. Herguth's investigative beat in Chicago seems to be limited to ripping the Church over the issue of sex abuse by priests from many decades ago. While the media's interest in the abuse narrative has generally waned over the years as the story line has aged, the issue remains Herguth's white whale as he struggles to find new ways to criticize the Church over marginal or arcane practices related to the issue.

So, not surprisingly, Captain Ahab criticizes this new Vatican policy and writes in a recent story that not defaming merely accused priests on public web sites might be a sign that the Catholic Church may be headed "into a new era of secrecy."

Yet Herguth might want to give a moment of thought to the fact that taxpayer-funded Chicago Public Schools (CPS) – right in Herguth's own backyard – has openly admitted that it once logged a whopping 470 allegations of sexual misconduct by CPS employees just in the 2022 school year alone. And unlike with the Catholic Church, which involve allegations from decades ago, the potential crimes at CPS are happening today, as in right now.

And, most importantly, CPS has not even given thought of publishing any list of its merely accused employees. Why? Because to do so would be unjust to the merely accused, and CPS would immediately face a flurry of defamation lawsuits.

The hypocrisy in what is considered "news" at the Sun-Times and by Captain Ahab could not be any more obvious. But don't hold your breath that they come to this realization any time soon.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)

Fr. Jay Fostner: A falsely accused priest shares his ordeal to help others

In the 20+ years of publishing our web site and spotlighting numerous cases of falsely accused priests, we have never encountered a case quite like that of Rev. Jay Fostner from Wisconsin. In the span of just a few years, 2018 to 2024, Fr. Fostner was:

• falsely accused of sexual abuse by a repeat accuser looking to score additional cash;
• falsely accused of mishandling sexual misconduct complaints while a vice president at St. Norbert College (De Pere, WI); and
• defamed multiple times on social media.

Multiple investigations were conducted into these accusations and found zero misconduct by Fr. Fostner. None at all. Nada. Niete. And while these ordeals were excruciating for Fr. Fostner, unlike the experiences of many other falsely accused priests, his story has an uplifting ending.

It all started a while back, when a pair of online zealots began spreading false information about Fostner on Facebook and in local media, claiming that the priest had mishandled complaints of sexual misconduct while at St. Norbert's. None of it was true, but the posts did real damage to Fostner's priesthood.

As a result of the online attacks, Fostner lost his job at St. Norbert's, and his reputation was in shatters. In effect, Fostner was canceled. But Fostner took matters into his own hands and sued the duo for defamation. And he won. [Read about the suits here and here.]

Not the end of the story

Uncanceled by
Rev. Jay Fostner

In addition to a personal retelling of his adversity, Fostner shares how a therapeutic approach called Meaning Reconstruction Therapy (MRT) and its emphasis on meaning-making can lead to recovery from trauma, such as that suffered from public defamation. The goal of recovering from public harm is, in the end, healing. As Fr. Fostner writes:

"I learned that healing is not just about clearing your name or proving your innocence. It is about reclaiming your identity, rediscovering your purpose, and allowing the trials you've endured to shape you into someone stronger and more compassionate." (p. 104)

In a world which often seems mired in both despair and condemnation, Fr. Fostner's book of encouragement and support is a much-needed breath of fresh air, and his work is a gift to the Church.

We hope others take notice.

The book: Uncanceled: Reclaiming Your Story by Rev. Jay Fostner, O. Praem., Ph.D.

Finally: The fraud has been exposed

It's been almost 20 years now. In January 2006, then-Fr. Dan McCormack of the Archdiocese of Chicago was removed from active ministry and later sentenced to five years in prison for groping several minor boys on the West Side of Chicago from 2001 to 2005.

From there, however, the story really took off, and the makings for a great fictional novel began.

It was the perfect storm: Fr. McCormack's parish served an impoverished black community desperate for any financial lifeline, the allegations were recent rather than historic, McCormack pled guilty to the groping allegations against him in return for the recommended five-year sentence, and the media frenzy over the "abuse crisis" was in full swing.

Thus, for nearly the past 20 years, dozens and dozens of accusers have come forward and filed lawsuits or made claims with the Archdiocese alleging that they were molested or raped by McCormack, and each progressive iteration of such claims have become more absurd, more implausible, and very obviously fraudulent. (The Illinois Attorney General's web site reports some 130 McCormack accusers.) And for many years now, Chicago media has dutifully reported the lurid details of each new crazy lawsuit without as much as a hint of skepticism regarding the veracity of the bogus allegations.

But the Archdiocese of Chicago also deserves an honorable mention because it was almost assuredly shoveling out many millions of dollars in confidential settlements to these folks which, in turn, only funded more litigation against it and attracted more crooks and fraudsters eager to claim that McCormack molested them too in order to make their own riches. It could well have been the greatest overall fraud perpetrated against the Catholic Church in this country, and yet the media sat by silently.

Worst kept secret

But the media knew was it was doing all along. It was a poorly kept secret in Chicago media for many years that the McCormack cases were almost entirely fraudulent, yet they published their stories anyway without question. As we wrote in a post here over seven years ago, in August of 2017:

"It has long been a poorly kept secret in the neighborhoods near St. Agatha Catholic Church and within the offices at the Archdiocese of Chicago that most, if not nearly all, of the abuse accusations lodged against ex-priest Daniel McCormack are completely bogus."

And now, years later, insiders now tell us that the Church in Chicago has paid out several tens of millions of dollars for phony claims regarding McCormack.

The full story has still yet to be publicly told, but the Chicago Tribune, who has published several dozen sensational articles on the McCormack case in the past two decades, is finally getting wind to the fact that there is serious fraud being perpetrated against the Church, especially in the McCormack case.

This past week, the Tribune reported that the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that it filed a lawsuit against a number of fraudsters who falsely claimed that they had been abused years ago by McCormack. Some of the fraudsters are actually on audio admitting that they had no connection or interaction with McCormack whatsoever but were eager to get in on the free cash that the Church was doling out.

One eager swindler was especially thrilled at the prospect of free cash "as long as [McCormack] ain't got to touch me for real."

Needless to say, these bogus claims are an incredible affront to genuine victims of abuse by priests many decades ago and to the pastoral response of the Church to victims.

Time for a new narrative

Here there is little doubt that a serious fraud has been perpetrated against the Church, but what it also signals is that far more investigation and coverage of this increasingly common type of fraud needs to happen.

Hopefully, next time it will not take many years of payouts on many dozens of phony claims – robbing the Church of resources to build the faith and serve the poor – before the media does its job and exposes its readers to the truth.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)

Mainstream corporate journalist bigots: Jenn White (1A, NPR),
David Folkenflik of NPR, and Alissa Wilkinson of the NY Times

It is a completely phony claim that refuses to die simply because it's about the hated Catholic Church.

In 2021, corporate media across the world tripped all over themselves to report a white-hot story that Catholic-operated schools for indigenous children in Canada had years ago dumped hundreds of dead children into "unmarked graves." So worked up by all of the media frenzy, people even torched and vandalized dozens of Catholic churches across Canada, which the media then tacitly acknowledged was somehow justified.

However, it soon surfaced that there was zero evidence of any such unmarked graves. None at all. The story was totally false. One Canadian professor even proclaimed that these phony tales of unmarked graves were "the biggest fake news story in Canadian history."

Cue the usual effete haters at National Public Radio (NPR) and the New York Times who are now quite unbelievably promoting a new documentary film called Sugarcane, an angry screed about the long-defunct indigenous schools in Canada and, in doing so, are again perpetuating the bigoted "unmarked graves" hoax.

A few snippets from the rogue's gallery of political activists posing as journalists as they peddle outright disinformation:

- On a radio show called 1A, which airs on NPR, host Jenn White began her episode about Sugarcane by claiming, "In May of 2021, archeologists discovered more than 200 unmarked graves at an indigenous residential school in British Columbia, Canada." False.

- On a weekend segment on NPR, "media critic" David Folkenflik broached the story of "unmarked graves" with Sugarcane's filmmakers, who then rehashed the bogus "announcement" of the graves in 2021 while Folkenflik stood silent.

- In a glowing review of Sugarcane, New York Times critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote that "unmarked graves were found on the grounds of a number of Indigenous Canadian residential schools." False.

To be precise: Exactly zero "unmarked graves" have been found at indigenous schools in Canada. None at all. There are no "missing children." The entire story is a hoax, and its purpose is simply to defame the Catholic Church.

If there is one hopeful sign in all of this it is that it only further evidences that the NYT and NPR as institutions have now gone fully rogue allowing the publishing of a phony story like this because it plays to its readership and drives revenue. We might have arrived at the day where the reporting of establishment journalists like these three bigots is viewed by the public with the same level of skepticism as the meanderings of anonymous postings on Twitter.

For more reading:

- "In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found" (The Dorchester Review, Jan. 11, 2022)

- "The year of the graves: How the world's media got it wrong on residential school graves" (National Post, May 26, 2022)

- "No evidence of 'mass graves' or 'genocide' in residential schools" (The Fraser Institute, Feb. 12, 2024)

- Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) (Amazon.com)

- Previously at TheMediaReport.com: "Another Anti-Catholic Media Hoax Exposed: News of 'Unmarked Graves' In Canada Revealed As a Fraud" (June 6, 2022)

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "The Great Shakedown Keeps A-Rollin': Phony Claims Continue at Epic Pace, Here Are The Facts" (January 2024)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)

Persecuted even in death: Cardinal George Pell

You can't make this up. To begin, Cardinal George Pell never abused anybody. In fact, Australian law enforcement officials even admitted in court that they began an investigation into Pell in 2013 even though there were not any criminal complaints against him! Or, as Pell's attorney rightly observed, "It was an operation looking for a crime and a complainant."

Now, even though Pell was fully exonerated in March 2020 for kooky accusations against him from many decades ago, and he died in January of last year, an Australian court has just ruled that the family of a dead accuser can somehow still sue the Catholic Church and Pell's estate for big cash over the claim that the flimflammer's father suffered "nervous shock" over the mere allegation that Pell abused his son. And you thought our legal system here in the U.S. was out of control.

Can things get any crazier?

Would such an absurd lawsuit ever proceed against any other organization other than the hated Catholic Church? Of course not. We now live in an age of government-promoted bigotry and persecution against the Catholic Church.

Will the media ever take notice?

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Read more:
- The Witch Hunt Against Australia's Cardinal George Pell: Five Facts You Need To Know (TheMediaReport.com, Dec. 2018)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)

Show me the money!

The legacy media will never admit this, and the professional victims' groups will outright lie. But the facts are the facts.

Bogus abuse accusations against Catholic priests are now off the charts. Fraud being perpetrated against the Church is rampant. But don't take our word for it. Here are the undisputed numbers:

● In 2021, in a church of 70 million people in the United States, 44 current minors came forward alleging that a current priest had recently abused them. However, only four of these 44 were found to be "substantiated" by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, while the remaining 40 (or 91% (!)) were found to be completely bogus.

● According to the 2022 independent annual audit report, only 6% of all historical accusations against Catholic priests in 2022 were even deemed "substantiated," with the majority of accusations deemed either "unsubstantiated" (indeed false*), "unable to be proven," or still under review.

● In 2011, a former FBI investigator examining abuse claims against priests in Los Angeles attested in a Los Angeles County Superior Court filing that "ONE-HALF of the claims were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse." (Emphasis in the original document.)

● The Archdiocese of Boston – arguably the most publicly transparent diocese with regards to accused priests – has published the names of 60 priests who have been determined guilty of abuse by either canonical or civil proceedings. Yet it has also concluded that 38 priests have been falsely accused. In other words, nearly 40 percent (38.8%) of priests in Boston are determined innocent after a complete investigation. Let that sink in.

And then there's the money

Yes, it's the money

That the Church regularly pays out on specious and even goofy claims should not surprise any longtime reader of this site. We reported a while back how the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, a small diocese in Louisiana, openly admitted that even though "there has not been a case that we deemed to be true," it had still paid at least one claim alleging abuse decades earlier.

Simply put: Fraudsters, flimflammers, and mental cases now score big cash settlements by making claims of past abuse. And the more the Church pays out on these bogus claims, the more claims it gets. This is not complicated, but simple human nature and motivation. There is no downside to filing suit, which you get to do anonymously. So why not give it a try?

Indeed, there was once the shocking story of two robbers who walked into a sacristy in Illinois after Mass and demanded money from a priest with the ominous threat, "We'll say you touched us, read the paper, they'll believe us."

And then there was the story of an imprisoned man actually recorded on phone calls scheming to rip off the Church with a bogus abuse claim with a friend who had already done so. (An East-coast attorney once wrote that prisoners falsely accusing priests for money was a "current and popular scam." And he wrote this in 2001, some 23 years ago!)

And not to be forgotten: the horror show in Philadelphia, where multiple priests were falsely accused and a completely innocent priest died in prison. (Note to writers in the Catholic media: If you don't know what transpired in Philly years ago, please take the time to learn about it.)

A time to step up

The persecution of the Church is not always violent, as it has often been in history. Sometimes it is economic, as it is here in the West. Fueled by media hysteria and hatred, plaintiffs are still continuing to come out of the woodwork to file phony claims to cash in on the big dollars being offered to them.

It is high time for defenders of truth and justice to call out this ongoing extortion racket for what it is and finally push back. Or even more fraud will simply follow.

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* Important note: Some readers are unclear on what is meant by "unsubstantiated" allegations in the annual audit reports of Church abuse. Well, straight from the reports themselves (emphasis added): "'Unsubstantiated' describes an allegation for which an investigation is complete and the allegation has been deemed not credible/false based upon the evidence gathered through the investigation."

In other words, "unsubstantiated" claims are indeed bogus claims.

[See also: "Five Fast Facts About the Media's Catholic Church Sex Abuse Story"]

[See also: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com)]

Back where they belong: (l to r) Rev. Michael O'Brien of the Archdiocese of Denver;
Msgr. Peter Popadick of the Diocese of Buffalo;
Rev. John Clemens of the Archdiocese of Chicago; and
Rev. Paul Guzman of the Archdiocese of Chicago

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the diocesan review boards formed by the Dallas Charter 23 years ago, while originally well intentioned, have become a virtual dragnet for specious, unfounded claims from decades prior in which the due process rights of priests are trampled upon and nearly every presumption is indulged in favor of the claimants, who are often kooks, con artists, and cranks.

Witness these recent episodes of falsely accused priests:

● Rev. Michael O'Brien of the Archdiocese of Denver was finally returned to ministry after local police and the FBI conducted interviews with over 85 "witnesses" only to determine there was no basis to the bizarre claim that Fr. O'Brien abused a single altar boy some 200 or 300 times back in the 2000s. But investigators should not have been surprised. Besides the accusations being ludicrous on their face, the former altar boy is currently in prison serving a 14-year sentence for the sexually assault and "assault-strangulation" involving two teenage girls.

● Msgr. Peter J. Popadick of the Diocese of Buffalo was returned to ministry after a charge dating back to when disco was cool was found "to be completely without merit." This was the second completely bogus accusation Msgr. Popadick faced.

● Rev. John W. Clemens of the Archdiocese of Chicago is back at his parish after an exhaustive investigation determined that there was "no reasonable cause" that he abused a youth a half century ago.

● The claim against Rev. Paul Guzman, also of the Archdiocese of Chicago, was so baseless that the priest was back in his parish less than two weeks after the accusation was made. The charge involved a claim dating back 40 years ago and a full quarter century before Guzman even entered the seminary.

Thus, the fraud now being perpetrated against the Church by such hucksters, nutjobs, and greedy lawyers is shocking as usual. But the Church, pressured by the media and the culture which hates her, reliably always caves in to this injustice and thus only breeds more of it.

As always, the same question remains: When will someone, anyone, in the media finally take notice?

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Want to learn more about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "False Accusations Against Catholic Priests Are Now At Epic Proportions" (May 2019)
- The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)

Another priest falsely accused: Rev. Msgr. Francis V. Strahan of the Archdiocese of Boston

The claims were ludicrous from the beginning. Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan (Massachusetts) and an anonymous accuser wanted the public to suspend all common sense and somehow believe that Rev. Msgr. Francis V. Strahan of the Archdiocese of Boston randomly sexually assaulted an altar boy in an open church shortly before a Mass over 15 years ago despite the fact that the priest had an unblemished record for over 60 years.

Msgr. Strahan was ordained when Dwight Eisenhower was President, yet we were asked to believe that he waited until the vigorous age of 73 in 2006 to start sexually assaulting altar boys in broad daylight. Msgr. Strahan is now 90 years old and, again, has never had any other accusations against him.

When publicity-hungry D.A. Ryan announced her indictment against Msgr. Strahan last year, the Boston Globe was sure to prominently promote the story on its web site. In what has become a standard practice in the Globe when it reports about the Catholic Church, angry subscribers then chimed in with a barrage of anti-Catholic screeds in the story's comments section. Among the over 100 comments:

• "The catholic church is the largest child rape cult in world history."
• "Catholics defend pedophiles like normal people would defend children."
• "The whole catholic church is irredeemably corrupt, and has been for over a millennia."
• "They're all either pedophiles or pedophile protectors."

(When an exasperated reader finally suggested that the Globe close the comments on the story because they were getting out of hand, another reader retorted, "Why? Are they mean to your child rape club by telling the truth?" Classy stuff.)

A fraud goes bust, and the Globe naturally goes silent

But, lo and behold, last week law enforcement dropped the charges against Msgr. Strahan after the accuser claimed that his "PTSD symptoms have increased" and he would no longer be willing to testify in court. Uh-huh. Having followed the issue for many years now, we know it is a common tactic for an accuser to claim some sort of mental condition as a way to avoid public scrutiny of a phony claim.

Yet when the charges were dropped against Msgr. Strahan, the Globe did not feel it worthy to report the story at all. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely shameful but in keeping with past practice.

An anti-Catholic agenda continues

Thank you to C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts for this story. And when it comes to the Globe, Doyle was spot-on when he said earlier this year:

"No one should believe that the media campaign against the Catholic Church twenty years ago was motivated by a desire to protect children … For the Globe and the rest of the Boston media, coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church always had just one purpose — discrediting, neutralizing and destroying the public influence of an institution they regarded as a political, cultural and ideological enemy."

In other words, there is no mystery as to why the Globe did not report Strahan being cleared. It didn't fit the paper's political agenda.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "False Accusations Against Catholic Priests Are Now At Epic Proportions" (May 2019)
- The book: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)
- The book: Sins of the Press: The Untold Story of The Boston Globe's Reporting on Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)

Lazy journalists: Ailsa Chang (l) and Jason DeRose (r) of National Public Radio (NPR)

Why did the Archdiocese of San Francisco just declare bankruptcy? Well, if you listened to a recent segment on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) with host Ailsa Chang and the network's "religion correspondent" Jason DeRose, you were told that the Church faced 500 lawsuits and they were filing bankruptcy to cover up their crimes and short the victims of compensation.

Trotting out an old bigot

Bigoted lawyer
Marci Hamilton

While Hamilton fashions herself as a legal expert in the area of sex abuse, a scholarly review of a book she wrote on the topic described her work as "poorly executed," "disorganized," "self-contradictory," "dreadful," and "riddled with errors." "No one should cite this book. No one should rely on it for any purpose," the reviewer concluded.

In other words, Hamilton is just a tired, old liberal crank who makes a living suing the Church she hates.

The reality

San Francisco's bankruptcy only happened because California passed "window legislation" in 2019 that opened up a period of three years to allow any fraudster, grifter, and ne'er-do-well to sue the Catholic Church for big bucks, no matter how long ago or crazy the abuse claim. And while NPR did mention the window legislation, it left out the critical details of and the motivation for this legislation. For example:

• California already had a year-long "window" period back in 2003. That legislation led to over $1 billion in payouts by the Church, including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone paying out $720 million. And back in the 2010s, Gov. Jerry Brown, to his credit, rebuffed two different efforts (1, 2) to reimplement the window statutes, saying it was unfair to open up the window a second time.
• False accusations against Catholic priests are rampant. As we reported only weeks ago, the recent annual independent audit report revealed that only a mere 6% (!) of all historical allegations made in 2022 were even deemed "credible" by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, while the rest of the accusations were deemed either "unsubstantiated," "unable to be proven," or still being investigated. And of the 44 current minors who came forward in 2021 claiming that a current priest abused them, only 4 of those allegations were determined to be "substantiated." Yes, nearly 91% of the accusations were bogus. Think about that: some 9 in 10 of the few current allegations are totally bogus.

It is obviously impossible for any organization to individually litigate 500+ claims, and California legislators surely knew this when they passed the window statutes. After failing to bankrupt the Church the first time around in 2003, California launched a second trip to the trough that even liberal Gov. Jerry Brown thought was too much and unfair. Meanwhile, the accusers are guaranteed total anonymity, and thus it's a fraudster's paradise. And for sleazy contingency lawyers, it's an orgy of ill-gotten legal fees.

In the end, the real story here – one that you will never see in the media – is that "window legislation" has absolutely nothing to do with old sex abuse claims and everything to do with attacking the Catholic Church and lining the pockets of hateful lawyers like Marci Hamilton. All that comes from passing such statutes are countless phony claims against long-dead priests and robbing the Church of critical resources to advance her mission of helping the least fortunate in society.

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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "False Accusations Against Catholic Priests Are Now At Epic Proportions" (May 2019)
- The book: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)